Idris

You should ask human form kheldians for advice on how to cope in melee with three shields and no mez protection. I have no idea how they manage. I was briefly tempted by Tough when I read that number but after some consideration I think I'm better off with Medicine or more powers from primary/secondary. Definitely getting an epic armor, though.

Yeah we apparently get the second best melee resistance modifier after tankers, defenders and controllers

So, what to pick, what to pick..

Leviathan mastery has that intriguing tornado power.
The armor is 2nd tier. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Does it mean the armor is stronger?
Pet seems a bit weak in comparison as resistance to cold and psi doesn't seem terribly useful. However the slow would stack nicely with mine.
No endurance recovery power.
Thematically it seems a nice match with ice.

Soul mastery has an endurance recovery power but it isn't auto hit like Power Sink. Ayone have experience with Dark Consumption?
The pet seems pretty good. +perception can't hurt and -recharge would stack with mine. Also has a hold. Looking at the powers the damage might not be great.
Armor is probably pretty standard. Negative energy and toxic aren't very common though.

Mace mastery has a def based armor with good set of damage types. Could be good for avoiding mez in PvE.
The pet looks like it would immobilize things on my ice slick. I like that it has a few -fly powers, though, as I always have a bit trouble with fliers. Probably pretty good damage.
No endurance recovery power. Instead a debuff but I'm not sure it's as useful to me.

Mu Mastery seems pretty strong in general.
Power Sink is a great power. Fast animation, auto hit.
Charged Armor has a nice set of resists.
The pet can heal and hold.
I'd definitely go for Mu if it wasn't for the red electricity. I hate everything about it, the sound, the graphics and the concept. If it had proper blue-white electricity, I'd have made my choice ages ago. As it is, i'm not sure I can live with it. Sigh.

80% duration for hard controls really hurts Fire dominators too. I don't really mind it on the ST hold because it generally feels long enough anyway. If I had Fire/Thorns I'd probably skip acc slotting on Flashfire and Cinders and use them with Aim instead to be able to slot more duration and recharge. With /Fire I think my best option will be building for damage so I can wipe them out before the control runs out. I think it will actually be pretty good, just different. The damage early on is certainly amazing compared to my Ice/Ice and Plant/Thorn, and I haven't slotted any damage at all yet. Already soloed my first EB, which my ice/ice could probably not have done due to high endurance costs.

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Fire Control low on AOE control? You get 2 hard AOE controls & an AOE Immob by level 18. They do need 6 slotting though. Well the holds do. Fire Cages doesn't and is likely to get a Dominator killed in any case really.

Personally I think Fire is as good as Ice for AOE control. In fact in terms of preventing enemies firing back its better as Flashfire > Ice Patch in stopping incoming damage (they get to fire back occasionally whilst slipping about on an icepatch)

Pity I picked Thorns for my Dom. And then skipped the melee attacks (only level 14 when I gave up on him. Maybe I'll thaw him out though)

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I think Fire is weak on control precisely because it depends too much on hard control, which is very limited in duration and recharge. Ice may get stray shots and that can sometimes be a problem on bad teams, but I believe it does much more damage mitigation over time than Fire does. Once Flashfire runs out, Cinders is still recharging and they're all gunning for you, what do you do? I have no idea if Bonfire is useful or not, though.

It's not like Ice is that weak on hard control either, with an AoE hold, sleep and immobilize. Those are just a lot more situational than Ice Slick and Arctic Air padded with Block of Ice, which is basically all I need for normal spawns. Ice Slick is very good out of the box too, which is nice for a level 12 power.

I quite like Thorns, btw. The damage is pretty good, although the animations are slow compared to /Ice, especially with having to redraw the thorns whenever you switch between primary and secondary. I think you're hurting for skipping Skewer.

Yes, blasters get an endurance discount for their more efficient attacks. The rest pay more for doing less. The devs don't seem to be at all interested in balancing endurance costs by effectivity. Maybe it's something like a penalty for doing something that isn't your primary role, but you'd think the decreased effectivity would be enough.

It's interesting to me that the way pool powers are set up, they promote specialization. If you're already good at something, pool powers give you more benefit at that particular area. APPs, on the other hand, promote homogenization of ATs. And many of the recent moves like ED or things done to controllers, again homogenization.

I think you need more travel powers. At the very least Fly and Teleport. Also swap Grant Invisibility for Stealth. Why would you want to grant invisibility to others? Them being visible is a great distraction and allows you to flee untouched.

Don't you think Greater Ice Sword looks a bit ridiculous, though? I was hoping for the animation Jack has on his amazing sword attack, not a wavering sword nearly taller than me that looks like it might break anytime.

I'm quite looking forward to the Imps, and interested to see if I can go Staminaless with Consume. But I agree, Fire control seems a bit uninspiring in general. I think it will be a case of going for damage, damage, more damage and just enough control that I stay alive doing the damage.

Looks like no change to Ice Sword Circle, btw.

Incinerate is already amazing. I can very nearly two-shot minions at level 10 with Char and Incinerate. I'd feel uber if the control in Fire/ wasn't so crappy, but I guess it all balances out. And at least Flares is sufficiently horrible.

I wonder what happens to the close range attacks that Psi and Fire have instead of melee, though. I've been alting a low level Fire/Fire and I have to say it doesn't seem to need help in the damage department but Psi could probably use some love.

Could be a good plan. With the shorter Domination recharge, I reckon anything single target, fast animating and fast recharging is good for doms. AS has same damage scalar as some of the starting blasts, so at level 35 the difference between AS and Ice Bolt is about 5 damage. Not a huge deal but quite nice, especially considering that the knockdown in AS increases safety in melee.

There's a melee damage boost for dominators on test in US now:

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<ul type="square">[*] Increased Dominator Melee damage modifier to 0.75 -- this increases their melee damage by 6.7% [/list]

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Source

It's small but I like it. Melee damage was already on a higher scale than ranged and now it's even more so. 0.75 is same as corruptors. By all these changes it seems like the devs want dominators to be played very aggressive and in your face. I got no problem with that since it's how I wanted to play them anyway but it's another nail in the coffin of ranged and secondary light builds.

I just wish we didn't have to wait so long to get our second single target melee attack.

Hey, that's actually very nice! Thanks for testing it.

Someone was happy with the def based one (Black Scorpion?) on US forums, too. No numbers but they said it made a very noticeable difference. I'm slightly tempted to go that way since defense would help with mezzing too.

I want to be there and know no reason why I couldn't be, but the inability to plan my life ahead by more than a week says it's not certain.

Nevertheless, signing up Idris, level 50 scrapper

Yeah, I'm going to go for Tough on my /Fire brute because I already have a self heal and don't need another to cut into my DPS. Same with my Regen scrapper. Tough is not awful, it's still pretty useful for those sets.

I agree though, for a defense set I'd go with Aid Self anytime.

Actually any defense (or resistance) is wonderful for Regen. It has a sort of multiplicative effect, because even a short time spent not being hit is adding to the HP pool you have at your disposal during the fight. Combat Jumping has too little defense to be very noticeable by itself, and I wouldn't go out of my way to get any of the defense pool powers, but it's IMO well worth it to take and use CJ if you're going for Leaping pool.

Build Up is in the blaster secondaries (and not even all of them). So if you count in Build Up, you also have to factor in whatever buffs/debuffs corruptors have in their secondary.

Regen girl commenting on Dull Pain here

I think 3 heals are worth it for the Max HP boost.

I'll try to make it as I like Muse (although I too take exception to them being greatest rock band in the world) and am always happy to help a fellow music lover.

Do I need to reserve the name I want somehow?

You can also see it if you put two knockdown area powers like ice slick on top of each other. The knockdown turns into knockback because knockdown is low mag knockback.

It totally depends on your playstyle. IMO a triform doesn't need Stamina unless it's mostly human and running the shields. Mine is triform and I have no need for Stamina whatsoever, but I don't have the shields and never spend extended amounts of time in human form. Light Form has boosted endurance recovery so that's not a problem either. There's also Conserve Power to help with any temporary endurance draught you might have.

Edit: just in case you don't know, passives like Stamina only work in human form.

I *always* forget to check if there's status effects on me when I change from Dwarf.

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hmm k did you know that by adding 1 end redux into fly its end useage is actualy lower than hover ? not really worth slotting hover anyway as its to slow for anything but hovering.
makes hover redundant so maybe swap for air sup and move the slots to something else ?.

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No way. Fly with one end redux is still much, much more expensive than Hover. If you want to fight airborne you basically need Hover.

Onnea / Congratulations!

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks! I guess you can still see them if you get close enough, though?

They seem to have very high mez protection, too, as do Wolfspider Huntsman bosses. Arachnos are probably the toughest enemies for my ice/ice. Lots of fliers, -acc from Night Widow and hold resistant evil bosses. And that red Mu electricity gives me a headache.